


Shades

by MostlyAnon



Series: Laughter of the Gods [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age Kink Meme, F/M, Gen, Guardian Angel, Skyhold, The Fade, The Inquisition - Freeform, ghost - Freeform, my favorite OP anon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 19:39:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3541508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MostlyAnon/pseuds/MostlyAnon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke dies and finds herself the ghostly guardian of the new Inquisitor. Things go downhill from there.</p><p>She wasn’t sure what she’d expected out of the afterlife, but if an eternity of fighting demons and lounging around was to be hers, then she figured she wasn’t too bad off. It beat a lake of fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shades

**Author's Note:**

  * For [naphy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naphy/gifts).



> Based on a Kinkmeme prompt from an absolutely amazing OP Anon. Only lightly connected to Whiskey Sweet.

Certain things were harder to get used to than others. 

The sounds were the first things Hawke stopped noticing. It was amazing how quickly the screaming became background noise. Sometime after the third tick mark on her favorite rock, (the one next to the creepy bed,) she realized she stopped paying them much attention. Being completely alone except for spirits and demons; that took a lot longer. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected out of the afterlife, but if an eternity of fighting demons and lounging around was to be hers, then she figured she wasn’t too bad off. It beat a lake of fire.

She still had her sword and her dog had died in the same blast that took her. Grated, she could walk through the hound now, but that was only unsettling when she actually thought about it.

Hawke leaned back on the humid pillows of the creepy bed and shut her eyes. Four hundred and sixty-seven tick marks were notched into the rock beside her and later, when she woke up to go hunt that damn fear demon some more, she’d stop and carve in the four hundred and sixty-eighth.

Or not, as it turned out.

***

She remembered demons. Spiders, always with the Maker-damned spiders. Running, and being chased. Her hound growling. Pushing a slender elf girl in front of her and yelling at the stupid girl to _run_ before it was too late.

The strangeness of the air. How it was thick, wrong, even for the Fade. 

She remembered falling and hoping she didn’t land on her sword.

***

“This is stupid, even for the Chantry,” Hawke observed, not that anyone seemed to care. Her hound thumped his tail once in agreement.

“She can barely keep her own head up. How do they think she ripped open the sky? She’s barely a mage at all.” Hawke poked at the staff laid out on the table, but her finger passed through it. 

She sighed and looked at Cassandra. “You’re almost bad enough at this to rule Kirkwall.”

So far, being a ghost wasn’t ranking high on Hawke’s favorite experiences.

***

“On your left! Other left! _Left_!” Hawke growled and launched herself at the demon charging for the elf, knocking the thing back into the etherial enough that the slight woman could deflect the blow. It took Hawke significantly longer to deal with the swarms that were attracted to the oddly glowing rift.

“Please, take you time closing it, rabbit,” Hawke said, lunging out of the way as a spirit tried to take her head off. She thrust and skewered the thing on her blade, wincing at the soul piercing shriek. “Don’t hurry on my account.”

The girl finally managed to get the rift closed and with it, the swarms dissipated. Hawke allowed herself to be pulled along in the girl’s wake, too tired to care about putting up the facade of walking.

A familiar voice snapped her out of her fugue. 

“Varric!”

She had only a second to realize the stupidity of trying to hug him before she was halfway through him and staring at the backside of his head. 

*** 

“You are doomed,” Hawke told the elf, seated squarely in the middle of the mock-war table the newly formed Inquisition had set up. “The only person worth listening to is outside somewhere, probably cleaning his crossbow.”

The elf nodded. 

“You have a diplomat, but no diplomatic influence, except for Varric, who could put you in touch with Sebastian and…” she thought about who was running Kirkwall in her absence for the first time since she died. She’d pretty much assumed Varric would have taken over, but that seemed to be a false assumption. “Well, himself, considering his ties to the Merchants’ Guild. You have no army, but you have General Stick Up His Arse, and…”

She trailed off to study the remaining women. “And you have these two. Scary Bard and Arrested You for Being an Elf with Bad Timing.” 

She waved her hand hopelessly in front of the elf’s face again, in vain. “You have even worse luck than I did, kid.”

The elf put on a brave looking smile and nodded again. (This time in response to something Cullen had said.)

***

“The notes are right here,” Hawke said, reading through the top page. The girl was hunting through a trunk, somewhere behind her.

“Right over here,” she said again.

More rustling.

“On the desk, by the books marked ‘Herbs and Other Things.’”

A slam, then the opening of a closet.

“Still on the desk, where you’d write notes, if you were writing notes about things.”

***

The elf looked up at the qunari and grinned so wide, Hawke was afraid her face might split.

Hawke looked down at Varric, who was examining Bianca for damage. “I never looked that dumb because of you,” she said, sighing. Her brow furrowed slightly, watching as he stroked a hand over the crossbow, eyes distant, lost in a moment somewhere.

Maybe she should have mooned over him just a little bit, when she still could.

***

Hawke couldn’t wander. 

She had a radius of approximately fifty feet from the elf, but outside of that, she lost focus and coherence. The first time it happened, she came back to herself panting and covered in sweat, blood running icy hot. Her hound had whined at her, telling her to take the hint.

It was almost worse than the Fade, knowing Varric was just outside of her company. She was dying of thirst next to a fountain.

She came to need the thousands of useless errands the elf volunteered herself for, because the girl had the good taste to drag Varric along. The first time she did, Hawke tried everything she could to attract his attention, including temporarily possessing Bianca. She only succeeded in making him misfire and spend half an hour fussing over the aiming module. 

Hawke stabbed her sword into the ground and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, screaming out her frustration as, around her, the elf carefully mined some iron, Cassandra spoke to a Chantry sister about necessary supplies, and Varric argued a merchant into better prices.

This was supposed to be _her_ life.

***

Hawke stared through the fire to watch Varric clean his crossbow, her focus almost complete. The hound had gone off with the qunari, or as far as the hound could go with the qunari, to secure the camp’s perimeter, and the strange boy-creature was humming tunelessly, staring out into space. Hawke could hear the elf as she finished setting up the tent— they were too far out to make it back before dark, running yet another of the endless errands the girl seemed to collect. 

The elf was too soft a touch, always saying yes when she should be focusing on building up her Inquisition. (Sometimes, Hawke told her as much, but other times, Hawke told her not to listen, because what did a dead woman know, especially one without the sense to stay truly dead?)

But tonight, she let go of such thoughts and simply sat while Varric cleaned and oiled Bianca, a task she’d seen him do thousands of times in the past, though she’d never actually taken the time to _watch._ His fingers were deft, movements sure, strong as he swept the cloth up, over the curves of the wood, first smearing oil on the wood, then over it in a sheen, then going back to rub it in. His fingers curled tiny circles as he did and Hawke shut her eyes to inhale the spiced smell of the oil and wood, the part of his scent that was unique to him.

She barely noticed as the girl came to sit next to her, almost on top of her, so absorbed was she by his task.

“Varric,” the girl asked. “Can I ask you something?”

Varric shrugged a shoulder, raising an eyebrow at her. “Other than that?” he asked. 

Hawke rolled her eyes. “You’re better than that,” she informed him, stretching out her legs and leaning back.

“Why are you here?” the girl asked, undeterred. “Cassandra never really explained why you were a prisoner.”

“Oh, that.” Varric went back to his work, but his movements were more precise. “I was a guest of the Chantry’s for a while because they thought I knew more than I’d said.”

“She’s not going to let you get away with that,” Hawke told him. “The inquisition’s a good place for anyone as curious as her.”

“What did they want to know?” the elf asked.

“Told you,” Hawke said.

Varric stopped cleaning his bow and looked up at her. “Where Hawke is. And before you ask, no, I don’t know.”

“I’m right here,” Hawke said.

“But she is with you,” the strange boy-creature said, looking at Varric oddly. 

Hawke frowned, looking at the kid, but shook it off as more of his strangeness. He fit weirdly with the world, like he was something different than his body. She still wasn’t sure what to make of him, but she was sure to never leave the elf alone with him long.

“Nice sentiment, kid,” Varric said, picking up his cloth again, “but I’m not even sure if she’s alive or dead.”

“That’s two of us,” Hawke said, blowing her hair out of her eyes.

“She does not know, either,” the boy said, and this time, when she looked up, he was staring directly at her.

“You can see me.”

“Yes,” the boy— Cole, his name was Cole, said. He thought about it for a moment, then tilted his head at her. “Is that wrong?”

Hawke shrugged. “No one else has managed it so far. Do I look normal?”

She found herself the object of intense scrutiny. “I do not know. I have never met you before, so I do not know what you think normal looks like. You look like the pictures from Varric’s book.”

Hawke felt herself swell, something unnamed welling inside of her, vast and profound.

“Kid, stop talking to the plants,” Varric grumbled, stowing his gear.

“I’m not,” Cole said. “I am talking to Hawke.”

Hawke blinked, then half-fell across the fire to stand between Cole and Varric. “Tell Varric. Tell him I’m here. That I’m not gone.”

“I told him already that you are here,” Cole said.

Varric’s frown became more pronounced. “This isn’t funny, kid. Drop it.”

Hawke searched her mind for something that would convince him. “Cole, tell him I know… Tell him he gave Merrill string, to help keep her from getting lost and paid off gardeners so she could pick flowers. He paid off gangs to leave Anders alone. I never gave him his copy of _The Pursuit of Knowledge_ back and he read it to me after my mother was killed. Tell him…” She paused for breath, trying to think of any miscellaneous detail that they shared, any secret she could remember, and coming up blank. “…Tell him I wish we’d gotten drunk on whiskey more than just once.”

She watched Varric as Cole relayed her words, watched as his face filtered from dismay to shock. He inhaled sharply when Cole finished, looking in her direction as if staring hard enough would reveal her to him.

“She’s really there, isn’t she?” the elf asked, quietly.

Varric dragged a hand down his face. “Hawke… Unless the kid developed a few new skills we don’t know about, she’s there.”

“She has a dog, too,” Cole added. “The dog does not talk.”

Varric managed a strangled laugh. “Plays a mean game of Wicked Grace, though.”

The elf turned and looked at where Hawke stood. “Then all we need to do is figure out how to get her back.”

Hawke sobbed out a laugh, reaching out for the elf without caring if she could touch the woman. “You and your blasted useless errands.”

***

“This is pretty weird,” the elf said, staring blankly at her desk.

Hawke, who was seated on the sofa, shook her head. “Wrong again. I’m over here. And it’s been weird, you just know it’s weird now. At least Cole can tell you to stop taking your time closing those rifts, now.” 

“Are you _always_ with me?” the elf asked. “Are you here now?”

“How are you expecting me to answer you?” Hawke answered, propping her chin on her fist. “Why are you trying to talk to me when you know you can’t hear me?”

The elf swung her legs a little, watching the desk intently before springing up. Hawke followed along, absently swatting at her hound, as they descended from the tower. Varric was missing from his usual post by the table, but Hawke lingered there a minute to see if he’d left any papers out. Only when the world began to spin did she sprint to catch up with the elf.

“Again?” she asked, exasperated, when she recognized the girl’s path. “This is the third time today.”

The elf paused inside the inn, allowing her eyes to adjust. Hawke moved through her and to the side. “You need to stop that. Anyone could take you out while you stand here. At least get out of the door and into the shadows a little.” She shadowboxed the elf, taking her out in three different ways before giving up in disgust. She’d have to tell Cole to get Varric to help the girl with it. She wasn’t sure what would happen if her elf died.

Hawke wandered through the patrons while the elf made straight for her qunari. She settled on a stool to watch the show, far enough away not to have to listen to the painful attempts of the girl’s flirtations. The qunari was a curiosity— he was playacting at being oblivious to her come-ons, that much was obvious. Equally so, that he wanted the slender woman. He hid it well, but Hawke had little better to do than watch them and his eyes lingered a little too long, his touch a little too careful. 

“He wants people to think he is a thing but he is the one who thinks about things,” Cole said, sitting beside her. 

“Is that it?” Hawke asked, cocking her head. She groaned when the girl took a tankard from the qunari and drank from it deeply, only to sputter into coughs. “That’s what you get for drinking anything a qunari gives you!” she called, shaking her head.

“But you know she cannot hear you,” Cole said, frowning. “I can—“

“No,” Hawke said, shaking her head. “It’s fine. She’ll learn. How goes your dagger collecting?”

“I have them all now, thank you,” he said. “I am glad you helped. There would have been blood. People would have been sad, after.”

“Keep the barrel somewhere out of sight,” she said, with a shrug. She looked up to see Varric descending the stairs. She watched him pause to talk with the bard.

“For so long, she would have given anything to talk to him and now she does not have any words to say,” Cole remarked, thoughtfully. “Is that better or worse?”

Hawke shook her head and rose as Varric approached. She watched him walk through her to the bar, sit where she’d been sitting, and greet Cole. Without answering, she crossed through the stairs to where the qunari was getting her elf drunk.

“You’d have little things, probably curly,” the qunari was saying. He held up his hands to her head, curling his fingers back from her temples. “Like a ram.”

“That would be easier to deal with than yours,” the inquisitor said, nodding a bit unsteadily. Hawke smiled slightly, watching them. The small woman had to stretch up to snag Bull’s horns, measuring the breadth of them with her fists. Hawke wondered if she had any idea of the position it put the elf in; breasts nearly thrust into Bull’s face, on her toes between his legs. She noticed the qunari had put his hands on her hips to steady the elf, and shut his eyes when she grabbed at his horns. 

“Twelve,” the inquisitor declared. “No wonder you don’t wear shirts. I wouldn’t be able to wear a shirt either with twelve.”

Hawke shook her head and put it down on the bar. “Just get to it, already,” she said.

“Get to what?” Cole asked.

The Inquisitor and Iron Bull both started in surprise, then the Inquisitor blinked and looked around, searching. “Oh! Is she here? Now? Hawke?”

Hawke wished she was substantial enough to bang her head against the bar.

“She is right there,” Cole said.

“Why didn’t you say, kid?” Varric asked.

Cole looked at them all for a long moment. “Because she is always around, when the Inquisitor is around,” he said. “Where else could she be?”

Hawke closed her eyes and exhaled.

***

Adamant Fortress burned with the echoes of past battles, making Hawke’s head spin and ache. The very air seemed to claw at her as she followed the Inquisitor, sword ready. They’d been able to track down the Queen of Fereldan, who’d answered some questions on the Grey Wardens and set them on a path to the old fortress.

Demons tore past her guard left and right, ripping through the veil, called forth before she could put up resistance, weaken them for the others. Cole muttered his worry throughout, but said nothing outright, for which Hawke was grateful. It would have only distracted Varric.

She tried to focus in when they stopped, but it was too much, too crowded, too busy. Sick, suddenly, of the mess, of feeling helpless, of being able to do nothing more than watch, she lashed out, carving herself a space in Adamant’s blood soaked history. 

If there were to be demons, then let her join the ranks as one. Anything was better than her weak half-life. Her sword flashed, cutting down demons as they came, and with the battle came focus, singular to a swordsman, the ability to drive away everything but the next strike, next block, next blow. 

The pressure that had built around her began to crest and she rode it up, tackling the massive demon come to call. She leapt at the last second and stabbed down to anchor herself in the craggy flesh, held tight as sword found demon newly born and blood birthed them both through the veil.

Silence came, deafening, then the crashing slow fall of the pride demon beneath her. 

Hawke straightened from her crouch against the back of its neck and pulled her sword free, ignoring the blood that splattered hot upon her. Upon her, not through her, tainted blood dripping down solid armor.

For the first time in as long as she could remember, she inhaled a true breath.

The others were gone, ahead of her, but the hound already had the scent.

***

Hawke caught up just in time to see Adamant begin to crumble and fall to pieces. She ran flat out as Varric disappeared over the edge, faltering only when the Inquisitor fell, last. She found her footing again as a familiar verdant glow radiated up from the abyss.

“You have _got_ to be kidding me,” Hawke muttered, before flinging herself over the edge and diving after them into the rift.

***

“Just once,” Hawke said, landing neatly in the Fade, beside the Inquisitor. “I would like to go somewhere that cannot be described as ‘demon infested.’”

“That rules out Orlais,” Varric said, grin widening.

She reached out and casually pushed her elf to the side, sending the girl stumbling a few feet. “We went to that one island once. I don’t remember any demons there.”

“Spiders,” Varric reminded her.

Several hundred pounds of dog hit the ground where the Inquisitor had been standing, coming up with a snarl, ready to attack. Hawke pet the hound’s massive head, calming it.

“That’s right,” she said with a sigh. “If it’s not demons, it’s spiders. This is probably why I don’t have many nice things.”

“I’m sorry,” the Inquisitor interrupted them, stepping between the two. “I hate to break this up, but you are…?”

“Annoyed,” Hawke told her. “Must you always rush for the first target in battle? I spend more time guarding you than I spend attacking. Honestly,” she looked past the elf to Iron Bull, “you could have taken some of your time and taught her to stay back from the battle.”

“Inquisitor, meet Hawke,” Varric said, waving a hand between them. “Warrior, meet mage. Ignore her, your inquisitorialness, she has a thing about going into battle with anyone who doesn’t wield a sword as tall as they are.”

The elf’s eyes lit up. “ _You’re_ Hawke?”

Hawke shifted slightly, thrown by the reaction. “I am. You don’t remember?”

“Remember?” The Inquisitor frowned. “What would I remember?”

“The Breach, the Divine, demons, running, all that?” Hawke asked, gesturing to the Fade around them. “Being here before?”

“You were there? At the Conclave?” 

Hawke’s gaze didn’t miss the way the elf stepped back, nor the way her qunari stepped forward, towards her. She rubbed her forehead, looking around the Fade to orient herself and noticed for the first time that Cole had wandered a bit from them, following what appeared to Hawke as thin trails, emanating from the girl.

“What are those?” she asked Cole.

“Things lost,” he said. “It stole parts of her.”  
 “Memories,” Hawke supplied. “If we’re near where I was, before, that would be the fear demon’s work.”  “Fear demon?” Stroud asked.

Hawke smiled at Stroud, clasping arms in greeting with him. “There was a big one haunting this part of the Fade. Battled it a few times— it stole memories from spirits that lurked around here. We should be able to recover some of your memory by hunting down those trails.”

The elf looked baffled. “What trails?”

Hawke looked at her, then at Varric, who shook his head and shrugged. “You don’t see them?” she asked.

“You are the same,” Cole said. “But more.”

Hawke blew out a breath. “Right. You got my life back. Let’s go get your memories.”

***

“It was you.”

The elf stood struck, hand still faintly lit by the fade’s glow, staring at Hawke. The slight woman had fared no better than Hawke had, in battle, both of them gore-stained and sweat soaked from exertion, but where the girl leaned upon her staff now for support, Hawke held her sword, still ready for attack, should another wave come. No more trails twisted from the Inquisitor, nothing led them past this point. The girl was whole once more.

Hawke shook her head. “It was coincidence,” she said, with a shrug. “We were caught in the same explosion. I was simply on the other side of it.”

“It wasn’t Andraste at all, or the Divine, but you, who saved me. I made you a ghost.” The Inquisitor took a halting step toward Hawke. “It couldn’t have been a coincidence.”

Hawke swiped an arm across her brow. “I’m definitely not blessed,” she said, with a sigh. “It was just your dumb luck. Or mine. It was just—“

“YES, TELL HER ABOUT YOUR FAMOUS LUCK, HAWKE,” a voice boomed, echoing around them. “TELL HER ABOUT HOW YOU KILL EVERYTHING YOU LOVE.”

The Inquisitor looked around, trying to place the voice. When she looked back at Hawke, she found the other woman’s eyes lit with a manic sort of glee. She glanced over her shoulder at Bull, comforted by his presence at her back. Hawke was not a large woman, but the look in her eye promised violence.

“What—“ Stroud started.

“The fear demon,” Hawke said, with a ghost of a smile. “An old friend of mine.”

“And you waited until now to introduce us?” Varric asked, reloading Bianca. “I’m wounded, Hawke.”

“You know I only introduce you to the important demons,” Hawke said, crouching beside her hound. She scratched behind its ears, as both of them listened and waited. The sound of booming, scornful laughter echoed off the rocks, but the hound’s ears pricked forward, lips curled in a silent snarl as it took off with purpose. 

“Those are some dogs,” Bull commented. “Knew a guy who tried to breed them in Seheron, but they went feral on him.”

“They weren’t Mabari,” Hawke commented, rising to follow her hound. 

“No, they had too much wolf,” Bull agreed. He watched her and Varric follow the dog’s path with narrowed eyes, then looked down at the Inquisitor. “You okay, Boss?”

The elf smiled slightly, tilting her face up to him. “I’ll be better once we’re out of here.”

“After you,” he said, gesturing to the path before them.

***

Hawke stopped, so suddenly that the Inquisitor ran into her. Without thinking, she steadied the slighter woman, angling herself so she blocked the elf from attack without leaving Varric open on her flank. She didn’t take her eyes off the terror before her, an unholy smile playing about her lips.

“You get all that, Inquisitor?” she asked, war echoing in her hound’s snarl.

The Inquisitor fell back another few paces, allowing Bull to take guard beside Hawke. They settled into formation smoothly with Stroud, ringing her and Varric. Cole had vanished.

“Nightmares talk too much,” the elf recited, as if practicing a new spell, “and killing this one will banish Corypheus’ demon army.”

“YOU CANNOT HOPE TO DEFEAT ME,” the Nightmare boomed. “I AM ALL THAT YOU FEAR.”

Hawke’s voice lashed out, a whip cutting through the Nightmare’s overwhelming presence. “Fear. You?” Her laugh was a low, vicious thing, a wardog’s snarl. “I have already been _dead_. I have battled armies, blood mages, and I have killed worse than you over less than just one girl.” She shifted the grip on her sword and her muscles tensed. “ _I_ am what Nightmares dread.”

She struck like a snake, twisting and darting through the Nightmare’s grip, never still enough to grasp, worrying away at its softer underbelly. Iron Bull shouted a rallying cry and dove after her, Stroud on his heels.

“Aim for the…eyes?” Varric said, even as Bianca sang sweet in his arms. But the Inquisitor wasn’t listening, for the world had gone soft and silent, blurred by a mage’s passion. She reached and power came to call, never far from her hand. When a hard hit knocked Hawke down, lightning snapped in a rush, easier than ever before, and caged the woman, drove back the beast. 

The Inquisitor had seen the true nightmare, had seen the cost of failure. She let that fear in now, let it wash through her and away, leaving only power in its wake. They did not have to run to the rift to escape.

She stretched out her hand and smiled, closing her fingers as she beckoned. Like the hound to Hawke’s call, the rift came to them.

Fresh air was sweet, after the raw fade’s fetid atmosphere. The others fell through the rift like angels, but the Inquisitor merely stepped neatly down onto the stone. Half through the rift, caught between worlds, the Nightmare’s howl was unholy as she clenched her fist, closing the tear and ripping apart the demons, banishing them to the furthest corners of the Fade.

Varric offered Hawke a hand up. “Looks like you’re stuck here.”

Hawke stayed on her knees, too tired to stand, too tired to let go. She looked back at her elf in time to see the girl spun about by Bull, and breathed out a laugh, half-falling against Varric. “I’ve been stuck worse places.”

“You are a good dog,” Cole said to the Mabari he sat beside, scratching it behind the ears.

***

Skyhold quieted at night. It didn’t truly sleep; guards still patrolled and the scouts often preferred to stay nocturnal, but it was softer sort of activity. People spoke quietly, kept lights banked, and lingered overlong in shadows. Hawke liked Skyhold at night, but missed Kirkwall more for it; Kirkwall’s nights were always razor edged, threatening. Excitement thrived in Kirkwall. There was no safer place than the Inquisitor’s gilded fortress.

Which was probably why her elf was so startled by Hawke’s foot hooking her ankle, the sharp edge of her vambrace cutting up and against the girl’s neck. It took less than a handful of heartbeats to have the elf pinned against the tavern wall.

“This is why you don’t stand in doorways,” Hawke said, conversationally. “Any decent assassin would kill you before your eyes adjusted.”

“Do you want to bet on that?” Iron Bull drawled behind her. Hawke felt the touch of metal to the back of her neck and smiled faintly.

“ _You_ should have taught her this,” Hawke said.

“Seems like we have the situation under control,” Bull said. 

Hawke straightened up, loosening her hold as she turned to The Bull, hands spread to show them empty. It put her squarely between him and his elf, the tip of his sword against Hawke’s throat. 

Unconcerned by it, Hawke nodded her head, indicating the spot behind him where the hound crouched, its jaws so lightly grasping the vulnerable tendons of Bull’s ankle that the qunari couldn’t feel the pressure of the fangs. The ghostly half-smile stayed about her lips as she pointed one finger upwards to where Varric very casually had Bull in Bianca’s sights, leaning against the second floor’s rail.

“If I just tell you who has the bigger cock, will you put them all away?” the Inquisitor snapped from behind Hawke.

Varric laughed, slinging Bianca away. “We’re not in Kirkwall anymore, Hawke,” he called down. “Relax a little.”

The elf slipped around Hawke to bat away Bull’s sword, then glare at the other woman when the hound stayed in place. Hawke sighed and whistled the dog away, watching as it happily trotted off up the stairs.

“Ah, she had a point, Boss,” Bull finally relented. “You’ve got to stop standing in doorways.”

The elf blew out a breath of frustration. “I’ll start climbing in windows immediately.” Bull laughed at her tart tone and wandered back to his drink.

“Should I expect to be ambushed _every_ time I try to enter a room?” she asked Hawke.

“I do,” Hawke answered, with a shrug. She followed the woman to sit at an empty table.

“I meant,” the girl said, “are you going to stay, now that you have the choice?”

Hawke blinked, taken by surprise. Leaving had never occurred to her and now that she thought about it, she frowned. “Yes,” she said.

The Inquisitor waited a second longer, then nodded. “Good, because I dug this up from the cellars, and would have been upset if it was all for naught.” She set a bottle down between them with a sly smile, then slid out of her seat. “Welcome to the Inquisition, Hawke.”

Hawke looked down at the bottle. 

It was whiskey.


End file.
